Education inequalities linked to increased cognitive ageing in women

(Image: Pixabay CC0) - Improvements in access to education for girls over the last century in the UK are likely to have reduced differences in cognitive ageing between men and women, potentially reducing sex disparities in dementia risk, finds a new large cohort study led by UCL. Though previous research indicates women are at higher risk of dementia than men, the study, published today in The Lancet Public Health, found that historical inequalities in levels of education were partially responsible for differences in cognitive ageing between men and women, potentially contributing to sex disparities in dementia risk. Using combined data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and the Whitehall II study, the researchers assessed the impact of education and birth cohort on differences in both 'memory' and 'fluency' trajectories of 15,924 participants born between 1930 and 1955. Memory was assessed by asking participants to memorise a list of words and then recall as many as possible within two minutes. Fluency was assessed by asking participants to list as many animals as possible within one minute. Overall, the team found that women performed better than men on the memory test, with more marked differences found in women born more recently. Furthermore, women were also found to experience slower rates of memory decline than men.